After spitting continuous, freestyle rap for a record-shattering nine hours, 18 minutes and 22 seconds in April, it became clear that Chiddy Bang was a force not to be reckoned with.
The electro hip-hop duo, formed by Chidera "Chiddy" Anamege, 19, and Noah "Xaphoon Jones" Beresin, 19, made waves on the music scene last year with their popular single, "Opposite of Adults," and earned a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest freestyle and continuous rap. Tonight, the duo will take their talents to the Florida Theatre of Gainesville in the Never Growing Up Tour, presented by Party Degree, beginning at 8 p.m.
Anamege and Beresin are shaping a new musical frontier where the lines of hip-hop, indie and electronic music are integrating in astounding ways.
Opening the door for further experimentation, the two just released a mixtape titled "Peanut Butter and Swelly" that is available for free online.
The youth-orientated feel of the duo stems from the Philly-based pair's experiences and personalities, said Anamege, who comes from a Nigerian family.
Growing up in Newark, N.J., Anamege said the city was his heart.
"That's where I learned it all," he said. "You know, my style, where I learned to do my thing and spontaneously rap - spur-of-the-moment-type shit - and come up with rhymes."
Anamege then went to boarding school in Massachusetts where he was eventually kicked out. He then finished two years of high school in Pennsylvania and soon after attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, where the fateful meeting between the duo that morphed Chiddy Bang would take place.
Chiddy Bang has remained faithful to the college scene, coming to Gainesville fresh off a concert at UCF in Orlando on Wednesday.
"I especially love doing shows for college kids," Anamege said. "You guys know what's up."
Tickets for tonight's event are on sale online at chiddybanggainesville.eventbrite.com/VIP.
Early-bird tickets are $20 and tickets for a Meet and Greet at midnight are on sale for $15.
The Avenue's Diana Lopez picked up the phone to chat with Chiddy - uncensored.
What have you been up to so far?
"I've been doing a lot of traveling, coming back from the UK. I'm in West Virginia right now getting ready to play this show."
How did coming to Gainesville come about? I noticed it's not listed with the official tour dates. Was it a secret concert for your fans in Gainesville?
"It wasn't on the schedule, but it made sense to go. It's really cool because we've never done a show in Gainesville or in Orlando, and it's something that I'm looking forward to doing."
Why is your latest mixtape out for free?
"We started off just giving out free music, and that's just the culture we find ourselves in. Nowadays, instead of putting stuff out and charging people for it, me and Noah, we always thought it was the best thing ever to give out free music to our fans. Give out stuff that we think is a certain quality, stuff that's dope. Cause that's the way we build a fan base. That's the way we interact. That's our gift to them. We haven't even really dropped the official album. So people keep asking us when are we going to drop that record, cause we're working on it. Working on putting the finishing touches on it. In the meantime, we're going to give you guys a free mixtape, something to give to the fans to keep them engaged and keep them busy and give us something to hold on to until we come out with the official first release."
Congratulations on breaking the world record for longest freestyle! Tell me about it.
"It was really MTV that reached out to us to do it. My manager said, ‘MTV is doing this new online music awards show, and they want to have a piece of the show going around you trying to break the world record for longest freestyle. Do you think you can do it?' And I was like, well, I mean, I'd never freestyled for more than an hour at that time, and I didn't really know how it was going to go, but I knew that I could freestyle, and I said, ‘Well you know, I'll take a crack at it.' MTV had all these contingency plans because it was a livestream, and they were like, ‘What happens if he doesn't do it, like gets to four hours and messes up? Like what are we going to do?' They didn't know if I could pull it off. As luck would have it, I was able to just coast right through it and make it happen. It was amazing. I started at 11:30 (a.m.) and went on until like 9 p.m. They flew me out to Vegas and it was just incredible. At the end of it, I'll tell you what, though: I was exhausted. (Chiddy chuckles.) It's a little-known fact that I actually hold two of them: longest freestyle and the longest continued. So that was amazing."
You were talking about how you can just keep going when you rap, but if there's ever a time when it's 2 a.m., you're stuck in the studio and things aren't working out, what do you do to get going again?
"It really depends. When you're in the studio, you want to be wide awake, you don't want to be tired, you want to be well -rested. I have a long, long rest before I go in the studio so I can just go on for hours and hours and hours. But really it's just us: me, Noah and a couple of our people just in the studio chilling, smoking blunts, just vibing. Two a.m. here, everyone's exhausted - some people may pass out. You might find me in the corner smoking a blunt, just zoning out. That's sort of like how we do it."
What's your favorite thing about touring so far?
"I think my favorite thing about touring is just being in a different place every day. It blows my mind that yesterday I was in the UK. I was playing a music festival with Eminem and Rihanna and all these crazy people, and it was like one of the dopest festivals I've been part of. It was called V Fest. You know, I had a great time doing that, and today I'm in West Virginia playing a show with Big Sean, Mac Miller and 3 Doors Down. You cover so much distance, and you get to touch the people. It's always a fun time."
You bring a lot of youthful energy to the rap scene, especially with the Never Growing Up tour that you're on. Where did that theme come from?
"I think it just comes from our personality. We went to college our freshman year; it was full of a bunch of kids that a lot of the time were stressed out and studying. It was full of kids who had their heads crammed in their textbooks, studying for midterms and finals and shit like that. They didn't really know how to just have fun. Us, we kind of just had a good time.
We started our first shows, like the first shows we ever did, in, like, college basements. It would just be us and whoever wanted to come down to a frat house or a basement and wig out. We would just have fun; there was always a youthful energy to it. Just think about the kids who are really uptight and strictly focused on the textbook stuff. They don't grasp the essence of college, like meeting people and experiencing new things. When I met Noah, I was like, this is a new experience. He listens to a different type of music. We were in different crews and I embraced that new experience."
How did your parents take it when you told them that you were dropping out and going on tour?
"They initially opposed it because they were like, ‘What are you doing?' And they're all about academics, and they're Nigerian and they want you to be like a doctor or a lawyer and all that stuff.
But once they saw that I wasn't just f-ing my life away, and once they saw that there were some positive returns with what was happening, they were progressing forward. They were like, ‘All right, I can deal with it. It's not so bad.' Now they're like the proudest parents ever. In the end, it worked out."
If you were an item in a kitchen, what would that item be?
"I'd be like a butter knife. Like I'm not going to cut you, like, hard. If you piss me off, I'm not going to come at you. I'm a little smooth with it, but at the same time, don't f-k with me. (Chiddy chuckles.) You can't really do any damage with a butter knife, but just having the duality of cutting something, but not hurting you."
Is there a certain food that you absolutely cannot live without?
"I like to eat like steak, you know what I'm saying? I'm a big steak fan. A good dinner with a good steak - medium rare - is just like heaven. With mashed potatoes on the side - and gravy."
In another interview, you said that if a guest ever visited your home, you would give them a drink that wasn't very good. Could you elaborate on that?
"Oh shit, yeah yeah yeah - it's not a drink; you're probably talking about the Kola nut. Yeah, it's like really, really bitter. It's an African tradition, so whenever someone comes to the house, you offer (him or her) a Kola, which is this nut which is really ... it's not ... you know, an acquired taste. (Chiddy laughs.) It's not like, ‘Hey, let me try this out and it's going to be the best thing ever.' But that's not the point - it's about the culture, partaking in it and experiencing it."
Do you feel like some of your Nigerian roots are in your music?
"Xaphoon, he sampled some on some of our earlier material. But I don't know, I think the Nigerian roots, you'll get that across if you meet me. I don't think I present that in my music because I grew up here, in America. This is what I really know, but at the same time, if you meet me, you'll be surprised with how aware I am of the culture and how aware I am of what goes on over there. I'm actually going over there on Oct. 15. I always go; I go every year. My parents came back from Nigeria, like, yesterday. They travel there often, and I always go to get in touch with my family."
Anamege and Beresin's latest single, "Mind Your Manners," has more than 500,000 hits on YouTube.
